


Whiskey

by Severina



Series: Alphabet Soup [23]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Community: 1_million_words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 17:30:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5549204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took a powerful elixir indeed for the Dark One to feel any effects, and usually by the time he was finished brewing such a tonic the desire for it had passed. Now – magicless, weak, impotent – he has no such worries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whiskey

**Author's Note:**

> Gapfiller for the mid-season finale. Written for prompt "W" at LJ's 1_million_words A to Z Challenge.
> 
> * * *

The car pulls away and though he strains to keep it in view, the taillights soon fade from sight. Belle is gone, and though it was he who urged her to leave he does not expect the pain of it to be this monstrous, this all-encompassing. The silence of the deserted shop presses in on him as he turns from the door, and the weight of it makes him stumble. Rumplestiltskin wishes that he could blame the misstep on his old injury, but the pirate's magic holds. He is merely weak, old, frail. A shell in the shape of a man.

He finds himself some time later in the back room, strands of gold in his hands. A necklace he had wrought for her – the finest threads of his purest design, twined over and under into an intricate chain that glitters beneath the lamp light. He does not remember slumping into the chair and taking it up, nor twisting it in his fingers until the thick cord bites into his flesh. He lets it dangle and drop and cares not that it slips from the table to pool on the floor. He will never see her smile to receive it, or tie the clasp behind her neck with trembling hands, or watch it glimmer in the hollow of her throat as he loves her by firelight. Belle is gone, safe from the perversions of the Underworld, and his newly minted heart is cracked and hollow.

As the Dark One, time had no meaning. It was measured not in months or years, but in increments of events. Attaining an ingredient for a potion; dealing for a necessary object; gaining locks of hair freely given. All of it to work the most powerful magic for a single purpose: to reunite with his son and be a family again. 

He failed in that, as he fails in all things.

As a man, the minutes stretch out until they feel like hours. The wait is interminable, his mind filled with remembered torments. He has no illusions about what will happen with the moon reaches its zenith and he is dragged once again to the Underworld. He has no delusions about his own bravery. And when his eyes light on the bottle of whiskey tucked between some forgotten scrolls and an ancient abacus, he does not hesitate.

It took a powerful elixir indeed for the Dark One to feel any effects, and usually by the time he was finished brewing such a tonic the desire for it had passed. Now – magicless, weak, impotent – he has no such worries. 

The whiskey burns going down, and he relishes it. Savours the sharp sting. 

His hand trembles as he pours the second shot into the tumbler. Rumplestiltskin clenches his teeth, fixes Belle's image in his mind and forces his hand to steady. He can still feel her warmth against his skin, phantom heat to match the fire in his stomach as he downs the second shot. By the time he has upended the bottle a third time he can almost pretend that she is simply working late at the library, shelving books and smiling at the late night stragglers. But the fantasy doesn't last. Belle is gone, and the mark on his wrist burns hotter than the whiskey in his gut.

When the bell above the door tinkles despite the Closed sign, he looks up and bares his teeth. Even now they cannot leave him alone to say good-bye: to his shop, the life he made, the love he freed for the final time. Even now they call his name and come to deal.

He snarls and snaps yet still fetches what the saviour seeks, and only when he turns to pick up Excalibur does he notice the potion next to the sword. 

Rumplestiltskin does not hesitate. He has no memory of concocting this potion, but in his long life he has learned that there is no such thing as coincidence. And he is not unaware that he has literally nothing left to lose.

Belle is gone – Belle is _safe_ , from the underworld and from him – but somehow he must carry on.


End file.
